Were Anglo-Saxons and Vikings Really Divided?
The St Brice’s Day slaughter of 1002, when king Ethelred II ordered the massacre of the Danes, is presented as an illustration of a nation divided along ethnic lines; however, the archaeological and linguistic evidence demonstrates a more nuanced view.
The new place names, personal names, tax assessments, or even words that have been incorporated into the English language from the Vikings are all evidence of a number of separate communities that have been living among themselves in suspicion and isolation. However, a closer examination of the evidence reveals a number of details that tell a different story. Excavations in York, the former Jorvik, of Viking-age buildings, constructed in the same manner as the English, suggest that there was no distinct “ethnic” hallmarks. The Scandinavian language had disappeared from the Isle of Man, the most Norse-intensive region in Britain, within two centuries, and the English adopted it elsewhere even more quickly. The comparison of skeletons of the Vikings who have died in York with the local people of the nearby village of Wharram Percy suggests that the genetic Scandinavian component in the composition of the people of York gradually “diluted and dissolved” during the following generations.
The most important distinction among people for the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons who survived the St. Brice’s Day slaughter in 1002 has been not their ancestral homeland, Danish or Wessex. However, it was their loyalty to the local lord that determined whether they had been marked for death or not. The majority of England’s Viking immigrants have been gradually assimilated into the English community, becoming English themselves. Although the massacre of the Danes that was ordered by Ethelred II was most probably aimed at the specific individuals who posed a current military threat, and not entire ethnic groups, the slaughter of the foreign community resulted in the rapid transition from suspicion and isolation to the position where the English lord and the Dane could serve together at the same court. A Danish king Cnut ruled over a reunited England and Denmark and employed English and Scandinavian nobles at his court.
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